Note: dated 23 IX 1913

P. LENIN.
THESES ON THE NATIONAL QUESTION.
469

self-determination, does not contradict the precise meaning of the latter, and expresses a wish that the national question be included on the agenda of the forthcoming Congress of the R.S.-D.R.P."

7) This refers to the bloc of the Bund and the P.P.S. (Polish Socialist Party) with Jewish bourgeois-nationalist elements, through which the non-social-democrat Jagello was elected to the Fourth State Duma from Warsaw against the votes of social-democratic electors.

8) P. Struve had by this time slid into Black Hundred nationalism and was putting forward in his writings the slogan of "Great Russia."

9) "Russkaya Molva" — a newspaper of the "Progressists," published in Petersburg by D. Protopopov.

10) "Progressists" — a group of deputies in the State Duma, which by its political physiognomy occupied a place between the Octobrists and the right-wing Cadets. Its leader was I. N. Yefremov, a deputy from the Cossack nobility of the Don Host.

11) National Democracy — a reactionary Polish party, relying on Polish industrialists and petty-bourgeois intellectuals. It conducted a fierce struggle against the workers' movement.

ARCHIVAL NOTE. The Lenin Institute does not have the original letters to Shaumyan, but only copies made by gendarmes during mail interception. The copy of the first of these letters was made by such an illiterate copyist, who confused phrases, that we considered it possible to make appropriate editorial changes, which allow us to establish a text more closely corresponding to Vladimir Ilyich's text. The mail-interception copy of the second letter also suffers from a number of obvious textual distortions. For verification we used (given the absence in Moscow of the corresponding copy of "Izvestiya Bak. Soveta") the book: S. G. Shaumyan. — Articles and Speeches. Published by "Bak. Rabochiy" 1921, where this letter was reprinted (but also with obvious inaccuracies), and we give a synthetic text that, in our opinion, most closely approximates Vladimir Ilyich's text.

LETTERS TO S. G. SHAUMYAN.

I.

Krakow.
11 August 1913

Dear Comrade! Having returned home, I found your letter. By all means send more materials on the national question in the Caucasus (and Kostrov's article¹) and his books, reports of delegates with translation into Russian, and statistics of nationalities in the Caucasus and material on the relations of nationalities in the Caucasus, in Persia, Turkey, and Russia — in short, everything you have and can gather, send it). Since, unfortunately, you yourself cannot write, I hope you will find someone to entrust this to. Do not also forget to ask Caucasian comrades who might be able to write articles on the national question in the Caucasus.

Greetings and wishes for success. Your V. Ilyich.

Do you happen to know whether the writer Goldenberg still lives in Chernoy-Yar,² or has he already completed his term? How is his health — he seemed to be very ill. What is he like now?

I send you greetings and shake your hand firmly.

Were you in Nizhny and did you see any of our mutual acquaintances?

II. LENIN. ---- LETTERS TO S. G. SHAUMYAN.

471

1) Kostrov — pseudonym of Noe Zhordania, leader of the Caucasian Mensheviks, later chairman of the council of ministers of Menshevik Georgia. Wrote a number of articles on the national question in Georgian Menshevik publications.

2) I. P. Goldenberg (Meshkovsky) — one of the first propagandists of Marxism in Russia, was a member of the editorial boards of Bolshevik publications, a member of the Party's Central Committee. During the war took a defensist position, spoke against Lenin's well-known "Theses" in April 1917. Later returned to the Bolsheviks. Died in 1922. In 1912-13 was in exile in Chernoy-Yar, Astrakhan Province.

II.

Krakow.
23 November 1913

Dear Friend. I was very glad to receive your letter of 15 November. You must know that in my position I enormously value the opinion of comrades from Russia, especially thoughtful ones who are engaged with the given question. Your quick reply was therefore especially pleasant to me. One feels less cut off when one receives such letters. But — enough chatter. Let me get down to business.

1. You are for a state language in Russia. It is "necessary; it had and will have great progressive significance." I decisively disagree. I wrote about this long ago in "Pravda"*) and have not yet encountered a refutation. Your argument does not convince me at all — on the contrary.

The Russian language had progressive significance for a host of small and backward nations — undoubtedly. But do you not see that it would have progressive significance to an even greater degree if there were no coercion?

What then — does "state language" not mean a stick that beats people away from the Russian language? How can you not understand that psychology, which is especially important in the national question and which, at the slightest coercion, becomes corrupted, befouled, reduces to naught the undoubted progressive significance of centralization, a unified language, large states? But economics is even more important than psychology: in Russia there already exists capitalist economy, which makes the Russian language necessary. And you do not believe in the force of economics and want to prop up economy with the crutches of police lawlessness? Do you not see that in this way you deform economy, retard it? Will not the elimination of lousy police tyranny increase tenfold (a thousandfold) the voluntary associations for the protection and propagation of the Russian language? No, I absolutely disagree with you and accuse you of *Kennglphs-Preisncher Sozialismus*)...►

2. You are against autonomy. You are only for regional self-government. I cannot possibly agree. Recall Engels's³) explanations that centralization does not at all exclude local "freedoms." Why autonomy for Poland, but not for the Caucasus, the South, the Urals? After all, the boundaries of autonomy are determined by the central parliament. We are for democratic centralism, absolutely. We are against Federation. We are for Jacobins against Girondins. But to fear autonomy in Russia... forgive me, that is ridiculous. That is reactionary. Give me an example, think up an example where autonomy could become harmful. You won't be able to. And a narrow interpretation: only self-government — in Russia (and in Prussia) plays into the hands of rotten police tyranny.

3. "The right to self-determination does not mean only the right to separation. It means also the right to federal union, the right to autonomy" — you write. I absolutely disagree. It does not mean the right to federation. Federation is a union of equals, a union that requires mutual agreement. How can there be the right of one side to the agreement of the other side?

That is absurd. We are in principle against Federation — it weakens economic ties, it is an unsuitable type for a single state. Do you want to separate? Then go to the devil, if you can break the economic tie, or more precisely, if the oppression and friction of "cohabitation" are such that they damage and ruin the cause of economic unity. Don't want to separate? Then excuse me, don't decide for me, don't think you have the "right" to federation. "The right to autonomy"? Again incorrect. We are for autonomy for all parts, we are for the right of separation (but not for the separation of all). Autonomy is our plan for organizing a democratic state. Separation is in no way our plan. We do not preach separation at all. In general, we are against separation, but we stand for the right of separation in view of Black Hundred Great Russian nationalism, which has so befouled the cause of national cohabitation that sometimes more unity will result after free separation.